Helene St. James: No time for Red Wings' regrets

May 10, 2013

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Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

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Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard blocks a shot by Anaheim's Teemu Selanne during the first period of Wednesday's Game 5. Howard and Jonas Hiller have been stellar in net throughout the first-round series. / Chris Carlson/Associated Press

This is the sort of day when myopic vision helps, when a sense of humor eases the magnitude of what could happen at nightfall.

The Red Wings face the fact their season could fizzle if they don’t finish well against the Ducks in Game 6. They’re down, 3-2, in the first-round series, left reeling after an overtime loss Wednesday night in Anaheim.

Many on the team have been in this situation before, like all the leaders, from captain Henrik Zetterberg to Pavel Datsyuk to Niklas Kronwall to Jimmy Howard to Daniel Cleary. They know the best approach is to not get caught up in thinking about what’s at stake.

“The key is, just have no regrets,” Cleary said. “Got to go out and play hard, can’t play nervous. We’ve got to play loose and confident and play our game.”

The problem: The Wings’ game is so very close to the Ducks’ game. This series, right down to the initials of goaltenders Jimmy Howard and Jonas Hiller, has been so close it’s hard to find much separation. Other than Game 3, where the Wings rolled over and let the Ducks win, 4-0, three of the other four games have gone to overtime, and the first game was a one-goal game until an empty-netter in the last minute.

“It’s been really tightly checked,” Howard said. “Both sides have been doing a great job.”

It’s even hard to differentiate who said what after the last couple of games. “We let one slip away,” was the sentiment coming from the Ducks after they were unable to build on the Game 3 victory in Game 4; the Wings said the same after Game 5. That has led to tonight.

Howard sounded almost blithe in talking about the scenario at hand as the Wings must win tonight to force a Game 7 on Sunday in Anaheim. A team has yet to win two straight games in the series, but more than that bit of trivia, Howard draws confidence from how the Wings performed since January.

“This team has scratched and clawed all year,” he said. “I have a lot of confidence in this group. It’s going to be a battle. This series has been a battle, it’s been back and forth. It’s going to be the same way Friday.”

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Hiller and Howard have been outstanding; Zetterberg and his counterpart, Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf, have shown leadership skills. The Ducks’ advantage lies in their front lines, where they have more depth than the Wings, who struggled to roll four lines Wednesday. Justin Abdelkader comes off his suspension in time for tonight’s game, but even with him back, the Ducks are better stacked.

The Wings have lamented more than once not making things harder on Hiller, something they finally did in Game 4 and in the second period of Game 5. The Ducks do a good job fronting shots, so the key is to get the puck deep, get it around the bottom, score on back-door plays, the way Nick Bonino did against the Wings in overtime Wednesday.

“We have to have show some more urgency, just go after them,” Kronwall said. “You’ve got nothing to lose. Try to keep it simple, get the pucks deep, and go after them.”

A bounce here, a bounce there, determines games now. The Wings have hit numerous posts and think they’re due to see one go in. The Ducks probably feel Corey Perry is due after contributing only one assist in the series.

“You just go out and play,” Zetterberg said. “You don’t overdo it too much. Just play like you did before — stick to your structure and do the little things right. The emotion will be there — you will be really fired up to go out and play. We have a good structure that we have to rely on, and everything else will come.”

As for the young guys on the team who might toss and turn trying not to think of what one more loss means, the last week of the regular season was pretty good training ground. The Wings entered that stretch ninth in the Western Conference, then strung together four straight victories to emerge in seventh place.

“All those games were elimination games at the end there,” defenseman Brendan Smith said. “Maybe it didn’t seem like we needed to win all of them, but the coaches were telling us we had to win them all, and we actually did. Just knowing that we did that is huge. It’s going to give us an idea of what to expect.”

What the Wings really expect, of course, is to be playing Sunday. But no looking ahead.